Rory Smith is a football reporter for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph in the north west, covering Liverpool and Everton, as well as Manchester United, Manchester City and the myriad other teams who make up English football's heartland.

World Cup 2010: England must learn to innovate again to succeed

Chile have earned the plaudits for their attacking style of football (Photo: AFP)

The usual suspects are lined up, ready for the millions of eyewitnesses to the crime to identify, try and judge them. The court of public opinion is in full session.

The manager, of course, standing there with his Gucci glasses, his granite gaze and his £6 million, iron-clad contract, is first among them. Guilty. Then the players, these princes among men who turned out, four times, to be nothing more than kings of wishful thinking. Guilty.

And the FA, the "amateur" organisation who have failed to address the root causes of England's consistent, predictable failure. Guilty. Let them all hang.

And so another cycle starts. English football is nothing if not traditional. We know how it will go. A new manager will come in, tasked with sweeping away the shattered remnants of the golden generation, with instilling passion and pride, with making the three lions roar.

By the time Euro 2012 or Brazil 2014 rolls around, the shameful withdrawal of South Africa will be forgotten. We will send 23 men to Rio de Janeiro to find glory. The El Dorado generation, perhaps. They will be feted as heroes, heralded as the team that can conquer the world. And they will, most likely, fail our heightened expectations, and back will come the self-appointed magistrates, and the rope and the noose. This is England.

Yet it makes no difference who the manager is. We have seen that. Fabio Capello remains one of the best managers of the last 20 years. It makes no difference who the players are. The golden generation are over-rated, of course, but they were, four years ago, a very good side. It makes no difference who is in charge of the FA. It makes no difference how talented our under-17s are. England's problem is not formation, personnel or even technique. It is philosophy.

English football lives in the past, but it does not understand it. 1966, the year that started all of this trouble, was not a triumph based on English virtues, that passion and pride that for some reason we believe no other country possesses. It was a victory built on the very un-English idea of change.

In 1953, England's arrogance that football's homeland must be its greatest exponents was exposed as myth by Nandor Hidegkuti, Ferenc Puskas and Sandor Kocsis in the 90 minute spell in which, according to the late Portuguese writer Jose Samarago, Communism truly existed.

For once, there was a response. The country changed its obsession with the W-M formation which had been commonplace for more than 30 years. Tactics were discovered. Alf Ramsey introduced a sort of 4-2-2-2 (though the team was still listed as though it was a W-M). The wingless wonders won the World Cup.

And since then? Nothing. England, once more, is stuck in the past. Capello took a 4-4-2 to South Africa not because he is a 4-4-2 manager, but because that is both the formation our players seem to best understand and because, more importantly, it allowed him to shoehorn in the star names which English football thinking demands must be accommodated.

The country suffers from a cult of the personality. That, too, is outmoded, as Italy proved in 2006, ending the Francesco Totti/Alessandro Del Piero debate by leaving one out, and as Argentina, with Sergio Aguero on the bench, and Brazil, who did not even bring Ronaldinho and Alexandre Pato, are proving here.

Cramming players in because of the names on the back of their shirts does not work any more, if it ever did. Modern football dictates that you play a system that works. It is not a best-fit scenario.

And how, in South Africa, have the systems worked. 3-3-1-3 for Chile, the now common 4-2-3-1, Brazil's Ramsey-esque 4-2-2-2, Argentina's 4-3-1-2, and Mexico's unique, occasional 2-3-3-2, all are present. All lend themselves to attractive, effective football. England are playing 4-4-2. At the risk of sounding like a hairdresser, there's no layering, no texture, no edge. An obsession with the anachronistic is why England find themselves on the fringes.*